The difference between SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA Analytics and SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics

Key Concept

In the past operational reporting was done by standard reports and Report Builder. The reports were then migrated to SAP HANA Live on SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA, which offered huge performance benefits. Now with the release of SAP S/4HANA, the whole concept of SAP HANA Live has been moved to core data services (CDS).

Big data and analytics are now at the top of the corporate agenda. A data-driven strategy is becoming an important consideration, and many organizations are turning to SAP S/4HANA for competitive differentiation. The defined architecture for the SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics platform follows these key business objectives:

Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO)

Innovative applications

Better and faster decisions

SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA was based on SAP HANA Live. SAP decided to move to SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics. The overall concept between SAP HANA Live and SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics remains the same except for the core data services (CDS). SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics is based on ABAP CDS, which in turn is based on the Virtual Data Model (VDM) in Figure 1. The advantages of the new SAP S/4HANA Embedded Analytics approach are as follows:

Full ABAP integration allows the reuse of existing authorizations and the entire life cycle of the CDS entity, which was difficult with SAP HANA Live

CDS views are open (i.e., the CDS views definition can be deployed on any database supported by the SAP system)

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Akash Kumar

Akash Kumar is an SAP technical consultant specializing in ABAP and HANA. He has 5+ years of experience in design and development of products with corporate organizations such as TCS, RBS, and SAP Labs. He is an active speaker and has organized multiple BarCamps in Delhi, India. He holds a bachelor of technology degree in computer science. He holds a certification in SAP HANA.